3 Comments to “what he said”

The novels of Derek Raymond are just as weird as those as John Fowles, which are just as weird as the films of Maya Deren, which are just as weird as the plays of Sarah Kane etc etc. Once the weird becomes ‘The Weird’ and especially ‘The New Weird’ (apologies to Mr. Miéville) it isn’t very, well, weird anymore.

To me:
Historically the Weird represents a thing that was after fantasy (and the implied religious/spiritual/moral explanation for all strangeness you’d find in pre-20th c. Fiction Of The Unrealistic) but before confident sci-fi (and the certainty that the strangeness had a scientific explanation) it was a sort of historical zone of uncertainty.

Emotionally, all strange unreal things in fiction exist on a seriousness scale going from funny (fish slapping dance) to weird to horrific to heroic. So the Weird again, is a zone of uncertainty–laugh or run away or just be fascinated.

I’d also say that the classically, arty “surreal” is characterized by the Weird having attached itself to neither the Sci Fi explanation nor the Fantasy explanation whereas the pulp Weird is characterized by acknowledging both equally and simultaneously (Lovecraft being the keystone).